When
the initial news of Bin Laden's death broke on Twitter,
many people thought that Twitter had supplanted
traditional media. But according to a recent TechCrunch post,
the microblogging site doesn't replace traditional media
so much as it amplifies it.

While
you may first hear about an event there, you will go to
a traditional source for more information and analysis.
While television producers were holding off, waiting for
White House confirmation, Keith Urbahn was able to push
a tweet out and break the story. His source? A TV news
producer!

Where
did the Twitter posts lead? Back to television, where
millions of people tuned in to hear the President
provide confirmation and details on the operation.
During the telecast Twitter was posting as many as 4,000
tweets per second, with many of the posts linking back
to mainstream media sources.

While
this event confirms the importance of social networking
in today's media world, it also supports the proposition
that services like Twitter do not replace traditional
media, they amplify coverage. In fact, while the Bin
Laden story broke on Twitter first, one could say that
traditional media provided the initial impetus, a trend noted
in a previous Trylon newsletter.